Home. Christianpersecution.jpg (JPEG Image, 600 × 408 pixels) Turek vs. Hitchens Debate: Does God Exist? Why Atheism Will Replace Religion. By In earlier posts ( here and here ), I documented a clear pattern where atheism blossoms in fast-paced developed countries but is virtually absent in less developed nations (1). The implication is that as countries around the globe get wealthier and more fast-paced, religion will decline. In a new study, I have found the most compelling evidence yet for this possibility. It seems that people turn to religion as a salve for the difficulties and uncertainties of their lives. In social democracies, there is less fear and uncertainty about the future because social welfare programs provide a safety net and better health care means that fewer people expect to die young.
In social democracies, people who are less vulnerable to the hostile forces of nature feel more in control of their lives. My study controlled for whether a country was mostly Moslem (where atheism is criminalized) or formerly Communist (where religion was suppressed). Yet, the 2011 study had a weakness. 1. The 9 Epiphanies That Shifted My Perspective Forever. By David Over the years I’ve learned dozens of little tricks and insights for making life more fulfilling. They’ve added up to a significant improvement in the ease and quality of my day-to-day life. But the major breakthroughs have come from a handful of insights that completely rocked my world and redefined reality forever. The world now seems to be a completely different one than the one I lived in about ten years ago, when I started looking into the mechanics of quality of life. Maybe you’ve had some of the same insights. 1.
The first time I heard somebody say that, I didn’t like the sound of it one bit. I see quite clearly now that life is nothing but passing experiences, and my thoughts are just one more category of things I experience. If you can observe your thoughts just like you can observe other objects, who’sdoing the observing? 2. Of course! 3. 4. 5. Yikes. 6. This discovery was a complete 180 from my old understanding of emotions. 7. 8. 9. Zentips. How Critical Thinkers Lose Their Faith in God. Why are some people more religious than others? Answers to this question often focus on the role of culture or upbringing. While these influences are important, new research suggests that whether we believe may also have to do with how much we rely on intuition versus analytical thinking. In 2011 Amitai Shenhav, David Rand and Joshua Greene of Harvard University published a paper showing that people who have a tendency to rely on their intuition are more likely to believe in God.
They also showed that encouraging people to think intuitively increased people’s belief in God. Building on these findings, in a recent paper published in Science, Will Gervais and Ara Norenzayan of the University of British Columbia found that encouraging people to think analytically reduced their tendency to believe in God. Together these findings suggest that belief may at least partly stem from our thinking styles. Why and how might analytic thinking reduce religious belief? Atheism: Proving The Negative: 100 Reasons to Believe that God Does Not Exist. This is my 100th post. Despite what my detractors seem to think, a lot of work goes into each. (You'll notice that I don't post blog entries about going to store to get a newspaper.) Thanks for reading. Here are at least 100 reasons to believe that there is no God: A 300 Year Gap A God Who Performs Miracles is Evil Adding Epicycles to God Begging the Question: Miracles and Nature Believing in God is Immoral Bogus Probabilistic Judgments and God Can Atheists Be Moral?
Can We Find Evidence for the Divine Properties In ... Coherence and Atheism Confusing Possible with Probable and Having a Righ... Dawkins' Law Deal With It Did the Believers Believe? Does Sin Corrupt our Ability to See God or Does th... Does the Atheist Need to Respond to Faith? Does the Theist Have a Moral Advantage Over the At... Don’t like my tone? Everything is to the Glory of God Fine Tuning's Fatal Flaw Fitna, documentary about violence, hatred and Isla... Garbage In, Garbage Out Gibberish? Giving God A Free Pass God and Suffering.